[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

The value, I would argue, is in the reading of the book and not in the 1's and 0's. To claim the copy is valueless is just plain wrong in my opinion.

That is essentially what I said. I agree 100%.

Just because they can get it for free doesn't mean it is valueless to them. Why should they not be required to pay some fair price for the priviledge?

I agree, but what is a fair price for a digital copy? The publishers believe it is the same price as a physical book. But the price of a physical book is based on more than just the text itself. It's the paper, the printing, the shipping, etc. Whether you like it or not, people generally will consider a book to have more intrinsic value than a 400kB digital copy of that book.

I just don't think the way forward is to claim that all digital media is valueless and therefore should be given away for free.

I don't either, but I see it as inevitible. It is up to the creators of products to instill them with value.

What if only McDonalds had the code necessary to make the replicator create that burger? Then if someone wanted the burger, if they deemed it has some value to them, they would pay for the code in order to get the burger right?

Yes. But that fits in with supply and demand, and that's how DRM is intended to force the same rules on ebooks. But DRM doesn't give us a product that can satisfy consumers.

If you could choose to get that code from McDonald's or download an identical code from the internet for free and your family was really hungry but you need your last $5 to go towards the electricity bill what would you do? That's obviously a ridiculous scenario, but it should point out that people will justify digital theft, and psychologically people will convince themselves it's not wrong when there is no identifiable victim. Since there is no way to stop that theft, would McDonald's bother to invent burgers if their recipe was impossible to protect?

no different to writing. If we could all write our own fantastic stories, stories that delight and amaze us even though we were the ones who wrote them, then would we ever pay someone else to write one we could read? But we can't can we? So why should we expect someone else to take the time to write that story for us and give it to us for free?

We shouldn't. Nobody is saying this content should be free. I am saying that due to technology and human nature, there is no way to provide this content in a buyer-seller way that compares directly to what we have today. There a myriad ways to monetize digital content, and I have faith that people will come up with a way that suits creators and consumers.

I believe that the supply and demand of the future will be more along the lines of: "Pay me and I'll give you access to the next great thing that comes out of my head" rather than: "here is a thing I created. While you could easily get it for free, I'd like you to pay me."

I Absolutely agree it is impossible to prevent free access to digital content. That is not in debate at all.

Good. So we can debate about whether it is plausibe to expect content publishers to be able to profit in an environment with no supply and demand factors. I don't think it will be possible in 10 years.

What we can prevent is the idea that because it is digital it has no value. As Hans said, value is what we make it. We can spread the idea that an author has rights too. We can spread the idea that if we wish to get the value of reading a digital copy of a book then we should do the honourable thing, respect the authors rights and pay a fair and equitable price for said value. Or we can keep going with the idea that "I can get it for free therefore I have the right to do so and to heck with the author".

Having content available for free doesn't have to mean the author doesn't get paid (and it definitely doesn't mean they don't deserve to get paid!). I am not saying that at all.

It just means they have to work out a way to get paid other than the exchange of a digital file for cash directly. It could be a subscription, it could be advertising, it could be something nobody has thought of yet.

Yep, and we as consumers have a few choices too.

1: Keep going with the idea that our rights trump the creators rights. That we are entitled to free access to all digital media for no other reason than we want it.

Of course the consumer's rights trump the creator's rights. The consumer has the power to not buy. In a digital age, the consumer also has the ability to get the product on their own terms regardless of what anybody thinks. It may not be morally right, but that doesn't make it untrue.

2: Decide that the creators rights should be respected, that a creative work(even a digital copy of one) does have value if we choose to assign it a value and work with authors in seeking out a balance which allows for a fair and equitable exchange to take place.

I know which I think is the way to go, which do you think is?

I would like it to be number 2, but I don't for one second expect that to pan out. It would be an honour system, and on a global scale an honour system would be...unrealistic.

It seems more realistic to me that authors and publishers will find a new way to make money from their product, which I guess is option 3.

Why is it not also the consumers to answer? Why should consumers just merrily go on their way believing the have every right to access a creative work for free just because they deem the digital copy to be valueless?(disregarding the fact that that whole concept is a fallacy used to support their belief and nothing else)

Firstly, a digital copy is valueless. That is not even up for debate. I think we can all agree that the value is in the intellectual property contained in a digital file.

Again, nobody is claiming that content should be free and that it has no intrinsic value.

The fact is that the value cannot be compared directly to a supply and demand model because there is no limit to supply. When there is no limit to supply the percieved value drops (like economy of scale on an infinite progression).

This debate is not about the morals of piracy or the value of creative material. It is about the inevitible changes the digital age is bringing to the way people trade in what is increasingly becomming a digital economy.

I have not seen anything to convince me that one of the following will not happen in the nearish future:

1) large-scale publishing will all but die as sales fall too much to support the current business models
2) publishers and authors (musicians, etc.) will move away from their current business models to make money indirectly from their otherwise free content.

Whether authors suffer or benefit from this is up to them.